Wednesday, February 6, 2013

The first time I saw
Barnett Newman's Onement 1 (1948),
I voiced in abject perplexity, "what is it?" Little did I know that
this was precisely the
question Newman wanted me to ask, so he could answer, while stifling a
chuckle, "it is...what it is."

Compare Spain's 24.3% unemployment rate against Canada's highest rate during the Great Depression: 19.3% in 1933; the United States reached 24.75% in that toughest of years.

The thing is, Spain “a few years ago took pride as the continent’s economic
superstar only to see it become the hot spot in the Eurozone debt crisis.”

What’s the value of a system
that can call a nation a superstar even while the very machinations of its
undoing must have already been underway? How do they get to Depression Era unemployment numbers without us seeing it coming?